


Orpheus, Descending

by FloraStuart



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:12:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraStuart/pseuds/FloraStuart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't look back or you'll lose everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orpheus, Descending

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 2.01, with spoilers through 4.03. Originally written for a prompt at Elrhiarhodan's Promptfest VII.

He heard a story, once.

(It’s a classic.)

There was this guy. There was this guy and he loved a girl and he lost her. It’s not a new story.

When he speaks it feels like shouting into a well, echoes bouncing like a dropped stone and disappearing. He’s never sure if anyone is listening.

It’s not a happy story; you won’t find those in here. Myths with happy endings are a new thing. The old fairy tales were scary as shit, in the original versions.

This guy loved a girl and he lost her and he’d do anything to get her back. He’d go anywhere, even to the gates of hell -

Yeah, Bobby, I know it’s past lights out. No, I’m not drunk. Seriously, where the hell would I get - yeah, yeah, fine. Dammit. Where was I?

Gates of hell. Flames and three-headed dogs, guarded by monsters, the works. He went right up to the gates of hell and wouldn’t shut up until they let him in. He made a deal to get her back.

There was a price and there was a rule, only one rule he had to follow.

(He was never any good with rules.)

*

In his dreams it’s Raphael’s dragon waiting on the tarmac.

He hears it breathing before he sees it, a metallic whine like a jet turbine; the narrow body and muscled tail stretch lazily along the empty runway, beneath a coat of black scales like plate armor forged in iron. Twin plumes of steam rise from wide nostrils, mingling with the blowing snow.

Kate stands in the shadow of a folded wing. She thinks it’s asleep.

Every time he tries to warn her. Every time he tries to call out but the words clog his throat like hot smoke and he can’t speak, he can’t move. 

He can’t breathe. 

She’s smiling.

She doesn’t see and the dragon isn’t sleeping and he’s no St. George.

She’s raising her hand to wave and the long triangular snake’s head comes up behind her, spiked black ridges along the armored neck. Cadmium yellow eyes open up like searchlight beams; the dragon’s mouth gapes to reveal razor teeth and a pink forked tongue. The back of its throat is lit by the flickering blue of a pilot flame.

It takes him a week to train himself to wake silently, smoke-thick lungs gasping for air. You don’t make friends in here, screaming loud enough to wake the whole cell block at 3 AM.

*

The price was a song.

(It goes like this.)

The one who took her, he said he’d let her go for a song.

The world is grey, here, mist and monotone fading to a numb fog, a perfect palette for painting ghosts.

Think of the most beautiful song you ever heard. The first song that made you cry. Liquid crystal notes falling from harp strings of spun gold and unicorn hair and angels’ tears. An immortal melody frozen in time, caught like a butterfly in amber.

No, I don’t know what song it was. I didn’t open the stupid box. Do you think I give a damn what song it -

Think of a song worth killing for.

Yeah, this guy could sing like that. Son of Apollo, god of music and a whole bunch of other things; Kate would remember all of them. She loves (loved) the classics. He had his father’s skill and his father’s art.

(Blood will tell, in the end.)

*

He dreams of the first place he called home, midmorning sunlight falling on the metal of the fire escape, on rust and peeling black paint; he dreams he’s sitting on the sun-warmed landing outside that fourth floor apartment, watching Mom hang wet laundry along the railings.

The sky is a pale duck-egg blue, blurred at the horizon by hazy brown smoke from some factory near the river. Mom hums a familiar tune, half a phrase over and over, like she can’t remember the whole song but can’t get it out of her head, either.

She glances at him now and then, and something close to a real smile touches her eyes when she says, “You’re going to be just like him.”

He didn’t recognize it, then, this grasping after shadows like clenching her fists around a handful of sand, the false empty gestures of moving on and the futile rituals of grief.

She hangs the laundry and he unloads the .357 revolver, the one Dad got for her just before he died five years ago, the one she won’t touch anymore. (He’s too young, Ellen told him, to handle the shotgun or the old hunting rifle.) He lays six bullets in a row on the landing, deliberate, purposeful.

He takes the gun apart and cleans it, reloads it and sets the safety the way Ellen showed him. When he’s finished he looks out over the city, across the rooftops of the nearby shops, across the snarled traffic in the streets below, out and away toward the wide sweep of the river.

He imagines he’s a sentry watching over the neighborhood; he lays the gun on his lap and pretends all this is his to guard.

The scene is still, peaceful, but when he wakes his heart is pounding, his mouth sour with adrenaline. Sweat sticks his shirt to his chest but his hands are steady, remembering a familiar weight and shape. His mind gropes, tentative, for that familiar sense of purpose.

*

The rule was simple.

(Don’t look behind you.)

That’s it - what, you guys were expecting something complicated?

He could lead her out of hell itself and the demons would lay down their guns and the flames would roll back like the Red Sea and they’d walk past the monsters at the gate if he only followed this one rule.

Of course he broke it.

That’s every classic hero out of all the oldest stories for you - bunch of damn fools who never could follow directions.

He heard a noise behind him. Someone called his name.

Everyone swears she didn’t feel anything. Everyone tells him it would have been over in seconds.

He remembers those seconds. He remembers how they slowed, time crawling forward like swimming in glue. He remembers an endless, drawn-out scream; he thinks time, like his heart, must have stopped for a while.

He wonders if she felt it that way, too.

(Don’t look back or you’ll lose everything.)

*

He dreams in color, while his days are endless shades of mist and slate and charcoal.

Kate’s eyes are depthless crystal blue like the Atlantic rollers, like the sky when they break the cloud layer above the snow. She’s warm and solid and real and _here_ and there’s no glass and no cameras, only the feel of her laughter vibrating against him like a bird trapped against his chest.

The sun is sinking, red light staining the tops of the clouds just outside the tiny window. Her hands anchor him, cupping his face.

Her hands are everywhere, sliding beneath his shirt as she pushes him into the seat beside the door. He lets his head fall forward, hides his face in her neck as she straddles his lap, long strong legs clasping his hips. She tastes like every dream he’s ever clung to, every desperate scrap of hope he’s ever kept; he breathes in the smell of her skin and almost loses it right there.

The intercom is buzzing, _reached our cruising altitude_ and he barely hears it. Her fingers comb through his hair, gently stroking; when he looks up her eyes are dark and hazy, reflecting his own, somewhere between lust and awe and she says _you’re here_ and her eyes say _nothing else matters_.

Her other hand tugs at his fly and he’s so hard it _hurts_. She shifts on his lap and his breath catches; he leans into her, soft whispers against her lips, _Kate_ and _please_ and _oh God slow down_.

The plane banks, tilting sharply, a white-winged bird wheeling toward the last light. She’s thrown forward against him; he’s so close already and the friction pushes him over the edge as the setting sun blazes in the window, spilling liquid fire across his eyes. He clutches at her, blindly, and holds on.

He wakes and the sheets are sticky and the dark presses like a weight against his face. The night guard’s footsteps retreat down the hall. He breathes in sweat and sex and some pine-scented industrial cleaners and he knows there’s no smoke here.

He can feel it still, scraping his lungs raw and coating the back of his throat, and all he can taste is the stench of burning jet fuel.

*

No, he didn’t get another chance. 

(Happily ever after isn’t for guys like us.)

This isn’t the Disney version. He broke the rule; he turned around and that was it. 

She’s gone.

Everyone swears it was over in seconds. And he lives those seconds over and over, smoke rising from a pyre that will burn forever in his dreams. There’s no color in this place but the memory of fire, a violet afterimage scorched into his retinas like a brand.

Are you guys even listening or am I talking to myself over here?

She’s gone, rising to the sky on a pillar of flame and he’s the one trapped underground with no light and no air, buried alive under concrete and steel bars and razor wire.

(She’s gone and he can’t breathe and he’s falling.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic of Orpheus Descending](https://archiveofourown.org/works/546658) by [fleurofthecourt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurofthecourt/pseuds/fleurofthecourt)




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